Last Updated on May 25, 2023

This post is going to be a little different from normal because this is an ongoing experiment that you can follow. Follow my progress as I optimize site speed results for this WordPress site. What does it take to optimize website speed?

1. Why Site Speed Is So Important

Note: You do NOT need programming skills or any other great technical skills to do anything I have done below!

One of the key factors in search algorithms is site speed! Why?

Think about it. These days someone surfing the internet is not going to wait 3 seconds or more for one of your pages to load. We are all less patient these days.

So fast loading pages are seen by search engines such as Google as being important because they are a measure of usability.

An optimized website or blog that loads quickly and effortlessly will give you two key benefits.

Even as far back as 2010, Google made clear that site speed was a part of their search algorithm.

Since then, they have also added in site speed on mobile searches also as a measurement. So if you want to rank in Google, you had better take site speed seriously!.

a) SEO Boost

So, improving site speed is important if you want to rank high in search results.

A study by Brian Dean, for example, of over 1 million websites, showed that there is a direct correlation between site speed and Google search position.

b. Better User Experience

As touched on before, a faster site means a much better user experience for anyone who visits your site.

This, in turn, means that you can retain users and provide them with an enjoyable experience on your site.

A slow loading site can lose you tonnes of users.

So, how can you test your own site speed and, after that, how you can quite easily start improving your site speed? Let’s take a look.

2. How to Measure and Quantify Your Existing Site Speed

There are two key site speed checkers that you need to know about and they are:

• GTMetrix
• Google Speed Check

GTMetrix is really the leader in providing data for testing site speed and it is the site you will see most people reference when talking about site speed.

The Google Speed checker, of course, is important given it is often Google results we are trying to rank in.

The Google checker though is far less detailed than GTMetrix. In the tests I show you though, I will use both!

To test your own site speed, just go to GTMetrix and enter your website address (see image below) and then press the blue button ‘test your site’.

These are the results I get for this site: promarketingonline.com – that you see directly below:

So, going by the GTMetrix results, for promarketingonline.com, there is definitely great room for improvement. What I really need to achieve is to improve the:

• ‘Pagespeed Score’ to above 95% (presently 90%)
• ‘YSlow Score’ to over 90% and Rating A (presently C and 79%)
• Fully Loaded Time speed to less than 1 second (presently 2.3 seconds)

Quite a bit of work to be done BUT I am confident I can reach these goals and by showing you how I do this, you can achieve the same super-fast site speeds for your own site!

Next, I looked at my Google Speed Check and I got 75% for desktops (and 54% for mobile). I need to improve these to 90% for both.

ACTION for you: Create a spreadsheet on Excel or just use a normal document and list your site speed from GTMetrix and Google speed checks. From hereon, as you improve your speed, do a check once a week/month until you have a super-fast site.

3. Maximizing Site Speed Using WP Rocket

There are various plug-ins for improving site speed but, as always, you want to avoid adding more plug-ins than what you need.

You can do what many people do, for example, and load the free version of W3 Total cache (and it is a decent enough plugin that will help your site a lot).

The tool I am going to use and that I recommend if you can afford USD$49 is WP Rocket. You can optimize your site speed quite a bit more than can with free tool such as W3 Total Cache.

To achieve what you can with WP Rocket you will otherwise need 3 or 4 individual plugins and a decent level of technical understanding.

The WP-Optimize plugin is great, for example, for cleaning your database files and optimizing your images, but this functionality is already built into ‘WP Rocket’.

Do you want to have to use 3 or 4 plugins on your site to achieve what you can with 1 plugin such as WP Rocket?

a) WP Rocket vs W3 Total Cache

So why pay for a plugin when there are Free cache plugins? The reason I use WP Rocket is because it means that you can do 90% of the things you need to do, to optimize your site, with ONLY 1 plugin.

Furthermore, if like me, you are not a programmer but you want to improve your site speed in the quickest and most effective time possible, then WP Rocket does the job.

b) How to Install WP Rocket

Once you are signed up for WP Rocket, you can download the plugin to your computer. Once downloaded, add this plugin to your WordPress site.

Just click ‘Plugins’ on the left side of your WordPress menu and then click ‘Add New’.

Then click ‘Choose File’ and locate the file on your local machine and then click ‘Install now’.

Once installed, you are ready to adjust some key settings on the WP Rocket Interface and I will detail what I changed below.

4. Optimize Heartbeat Control in WordPress

There is very little you need to change once you have installed WP Rocket but, if you want to maximize your site speed as I am doing here, you might want to follow the settings I made up.

Do not forget though that it is ALWAYS a very good idea to ensure that you have a backup of your site before you make changes to your site. I use Backupbuddy, but Updraft is also a great option.

If you are not using WP Rocket, then you can use the separate plugin Heartbeat Control for this task. If you use WP Rocket, then it is already included.

Once you have installed WP Rocket, you will see it on the top bar of your WordPress installation. Go to the drop-down menu for WP Rocket and select ‘Settings’.

Then, from the left side menu inside WP Rocket, scroll down and select ‘Heartbeat’.

When using WordPress, WordPress is constantly communicating with the browser (you might be using Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer etc.) and uses the admin-ajax.php file to do this.

This constant communication can slow down your site and this process is often known as ‘WordPress Heartbeat’. So I am going to improve the ‘Heartbeat’ settings.

So, go to the heartbeat settings (see image above if you are using WP Rocket as I am) or use the Heartbeat Control plugin separately if you need to.

Click ‘Heartbeat’ and then I suggest that you follow the settings below, i.e. to check the box saying ‘Control heartbeat’, make sure that ‘Reduce activity’ is enabled for the three behaviors and then click ‘Save changes’.

5. Optimize Caching

Next, you will want to optimize the caching for your site.

Once again, this is made real easy in Wp Rocket, but you can use a plugin such as W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache if you so wish (but be careful though to ensure you correctly set everything).

If you are using Wp Rocket, on the left side menu for this tool, select ‘Cache’.

Then scroll down a little further on the cache page and leave as 10 hours, the ‘Cache Lifespan’.

Then make sure to save the changes you have made.

Already, if you were to check your site speed in GTMetrix, you should start to see improvements. BUT we can improve a lot more things yet so let’s keep on going!

6. Media Files Optimization – How to Enable Lazy Load Images in WordPress

You may or may not already have heard of the term ‘Lazyload‘ in respect of loading speed for images and other media on your web pages.

In essence, the idea is that you can let media that is further down a page and that users have not yet scrolled down to, load as the user scrolls down.

This means that there is less stress on the page to need to load everything from the start and by using what is known as ‘lazy loading’, we can help our page and site speed.

a) Lazyload Without Using WP Rocket

If you are not using WP Rocket, you can download the Lazy Load plugin and it is quite straightforward regards the settings.

It is pretty much just a case of activating the plugin and your images should immediately start to lazy load when someone visits one of your pages. This, in turn, should immediately boost your site speed.

Warning though: I have already mentioned this and I apologize if I run the risk of boring you with this point, but it is important. You want to use as few plugins as possible.

The more plugins you have, the more you slow your site down and the more security risk you have because each plugin is created by a 3rd party and, unless that plugin is kept up-to-date and secure, then you run security risks.

I always try and reduce my spending but WP Rocket I think is one of those things, as someone using WordPress, that is just too valuable not to have it. And it is a very minimal cost.

b) Lazyload Inside WP Rocket

It’s quite simple to set the Lazy Load images and a few other settings in Rocket.

7. Database Clean-Up and Weekly Automated Cleanup

I have mentioned this before but it’s so important. Make sure that you have automated backups running for your site.

Whether you use Backupbuddy or Updraft or something else, just make sure you have automated backups running, i.e. twice-weekly or weekly for your site.

The reason I mention this again is that with the database clean-up, nothing should go wrong but as with anything technical, you want to have a backup you can immediately install of your site just in case.

a) Using WP-Optimize Plugin

If not using WP Rocket, then the plugin I would recommend is WP-Optimize.

This plugin lets you clean up your databases (and you do NOT need any programming skills for this as I will explain below). You can also use the tool to set regular database cleanups.

Once you have downloaded WP-Optimize, click ‘Activate’ (see image above) and then click ‘Optimize’.

Then, on the main WP-Optimize interface, with ‘Database’ selected on the top right, check the boxes you want to optimize (I tend to check them all but there is a description next to each for you to read) and then click the blue button saying ‘Run all selected optimizations’.

Next, you can select the ‘Tables’ tab (see image below) and then I recommend to delete any tables that it states are no longer used.

b) Using In-Built Database Clean-Up Inside WP Rocket

As always, this process is possible within WP Rocket without the need to install any additional plugin.

Go to the ‘Database’ set on the left menu of WP Rocket.

Then I am going to make these settings and you might want to do the same.

Post-clean-up

• Revisions = I am selecting yes as this will clean out dozens of old revisions I no longer need. This will help speed up the site for sure.
• Auto drafts = I find this useful to always have available for when I am writing posts so I will leave this unchecked.
• Trashed Posts = For sure I do not need these. I will check this box to remove old deleted posts.
• Spam comments = I would delete these.
• Trashed comments = these can also be set to delete.
• Expired transients = also delete as these are simply temporary files.
• All transients = Also tick the checkbox to delete these.
• Optimize tables = Yes definitely.
• Schedule automatic backup = Yes also and personally I set it to one week.

Do not forget though to ensure you are backing up your site in case you need to revert to your backup copy. It is especially important for this section regards the database clean-up above!

8. Image Optimization and Compression for SEO and Site Speed

There are various ways to ensure that your images are compressed so that they are optimized for site-speed.

If your images are compressed (optimized), then your webpages can load quite a bit faster. So image optimization is a great way to boost your site speed (and SEO) and it is EASY to solve this!

a) Quick & Easy Solutions

If time is of the essence in trying to sort out this site speed stuff, then there are two plugins that can do the job very well and that are easy to set up.

i) Imagify Image Optimizer

Imagify is a plugin that is extremely easy to use and the FREE version should be all you need. You will need to create a free account but that takes literally 1 minute to do.

If you are using WP Rocket, then it is inbuilt into the interface, so just scroll down on the left-side menu within WP-Rocket and click ‘Image Optimization’ (see image below).

Then click ‘Install Imagify’ and the process will be fairly self-explanatory.

When asked in Imagify if you want ‘Normal’, ‘Aggressive’, or ‘Ultra’ for the compression type, I myself choose ‘Normal’.

The ‘Aggressive’ option though is also a very good choice as it will optimize the image somewhat but with very little noticeable difference to the visual quality of your images.

If you are not using WP Rocket then just use the plugin directly via this link.

ii) Smush Image Compression

Smush is also a FREE plugin for compressing and optimizing images. You can only compress 50 images at a time but do not worry, as you just re-run the tool to run another 50 each time.

Whether you use Smush or Imagify, both are great tools and both make it really easy for you to optimize the images on your WordPress site.

b) Longer Solution: One Less Plugin Needed

Optimize Images as You Create New Pages

Now, if you want to avoid having a plugin at all for image compression (fewer plugins the better for site speed), then one option you have (and this is what I personally tend to do) is to optimize images before you add them to new webpages and posts.

To do this there are many tools you can use but one of the best is the image compressor from Optimizilla and yes, it is a FREE tool!

It is very basic and simple. Just go onto Optimizilla and ‘Upload File’ (the image) and then click ‘Download’.

The image you download back onto your machine is the one you will upload onto the webpage you are making. The image will be optimized. Do this for any image you add to your site.

Optimizing Existing Images on Your Site

Just use the Enable Media Replace Tool plugin. Works perfectly for making optimized images to replace ones you put on your site in previous years.

If you want to avoid image optimizer plugins but already have a site with lots of images on it, what you can do is optimize the images (use Optimizilla that I’ve mentioned above) and then to overwrite the existing image whilst keeping the exact same image name and URL address.

After you have optimized all your images, you can then remove this plugin.

9. Update the Version of PHP to 7+

PHP is a scripting language that is used in WordPress to make most of the functions work. In other words, PHP is at the core of WordPress.

Many hosts will NOT update the version of PHP that runs on your site and this often means you are running, an old version and the processing can be half of what you otherwise could have!

There are clear benefits of processing speed as you can see from the Kinsta diagram above (where PHP 7.0 can handle twice the requests as PHP 5.6).

Furthermore, there are other key benefits as explained in the WordPress site. Let me summarise though the key points:

• Significant performance improvement as mentioned with greatly improved requests per second handling.
• Better security for your site – because the latest versions of PHP are better maintained and supported.
• Faster loading time (better for SEO and user experience)

Finding Your Version of PHP

If you are using a theme such as Divi from Elegant Themes (which we use on this site) then you can go to Divi –> Support Centre on your left-side WordPress menu bar and you will see the PHP version you are using.

Whether or not you use a theme such as Divi, you can and should anyway go to the Control Panel for your hosting (or get your programmer to do this) and then go to the ‘Software’ section and then click ‘PHP Selector’.

Once you are inside ‘PHP Selector’ on the Control Panel for your website hosting, you will be faced with an interface where you will see the:

• version of PHP your hosting company sets as the default
• version you are presently using
• and you will see a drop-down of the PHP versions you can choose to install.

As always, make sure you have your site fully backed up before upgrading your PHP version.

10. Minify Html

When checking your site speed in GTMetrix, if you have not already optimized them, then chances are that you will need to ‘minify html’ in order to help improve your site speed.

The easiest way to instantly solve this issue is to go to the ‘File Optimization’ tab on WP Rocket and to check the box next to ‘Minify html’.

11. Combine Google Fonts Files

You will also often see ‘Google Fonts’ as one of the issues that will slow your site down.

To improve site speed for the loading and http request for Google Fonts, check the box on the ‘file optimization’ page in WP Rocket (see image above).

12. Minify CSS Files

To continue optimizing my site speed, I also checked the Minify CSS Files option in WP Rocket. This will further help to super-charge the loading of this site.

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13. Remove Unneeded Plugins

It is very easy to keep adding plugins when using WordPress because there is a plugin for everything.

With every plugin you load though, you are slowing down your site so, if you do not need a plugin, remove it! I try to keep to a maximum of 15 plugins if I can.

I know that I have mentioned WP Rocket so many times in this post but this issue of trying to limit the plugins you use is key. So why use 4 plugins to do what you can achieve with one plugin (aka WP Rocket) for mastering site speed.

Whatever plugins you use, ask yourself if you really need it. Fewer plugins = a faster site!

14. Moving to SiteGround Hosting

I had put it off for ages but had planned for a long time to move to SiteGround having continually heard over the years about the superior performance, customer service and overall benefits of SiteGround.

So I have moved Valeria’s business site Symonds Training onto SiteGround and I am still testing and analyzing site speed and performance. So far though I have to say that I am extremely impressed! Very impressed indeed.